Untitled

Hagen Atkins

Interview by C. VanWinkle
February 2, 2023

Would you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

I think my first impression was that it was really dark. I typically paint with so much vibrancy and this was not my usual art style. There were four adults, and you could see that they're on their phones. There was some high contrast, but the one in-your-face point of vibrancy was text that said, “One plus one equals one,” with a question mark next to it. I thought that was super interesting because I love thinking about technology. I mean who doesn’t? We're so surrounded by technology that it's an endlessly fascinating topic.

These days, pretty much everyone can relate to it. Was that your first impression?

My moods are so mercurial, any reaction I have is super fast. That photo I sent with all my ideas written down was probably taken within 20 minutes of seeing the prompt. I work at a middle school, where there's constantly this concern about kids and technology. And not just for middle schoolers but adults as well. I'm around that all the time, so all of those things came pretty fast, and I wrote them down a couple hours later after processing it and organizing it.

What did those numbers mean to you?

I can't remember if it was in an article or maybe a podcast, but I heard something about how, when people use their phones, especially Google, they think they're smarter than they are. There was this scientific study where they gave someone a phone and let them scroll for 30 minutes. Then they gave them a test of really common things that you learn in middle school or elementary school, like “What kind of cloud is this?” and similar stuff to that. Then they asked, “How sure are you that you know this information?” The people who had access to their phones 30 minutes prior, even if they didn’t know the answers, were super sure that they could answer all of those things. And the people who didn't have access to their phones were more like, “Well, maybe I know this, maybe I don't know this.” When I saw the image with those numbers in the corner, that was instantly my first thought.

Also, it's really interesting working in a middle school. These kids have so much access to technology. They're on their phones constantly, they’ve been zooming during COVID. It's so easy as an adult to assume they're just very good at technology, they know what they're doing, they can find whatever they need. But then you go into the classroom. If they say, “I don't know how to do this,” you tell them, “Just Google it, you can Google anything. If you don't know or your friend doesn't know or I'm not there, just Google it.” And so many of them ask, “Well… what do I Google?” I know, it’s a little startling. They're so used to the things that they regularly do on their phones, that the things that they don't use often they're just not sure of. And it made me think of that. We automatically think certain people are really good at technology or if they're older they're really bad, and it's not always the case.

That makes sense. You're good at the stuff you do a lot. If you're a kid, you're probably really fast at texting and gaming and stuff.

Yeah, but when it comes to accessing information, they might have a really hard time with that.

How did you get started on your piece?

The other part of technology that always interests me is how we see ourselves and represent ourselves through it. Social media is an echo chamber. It shows you what the algorithm thinks you want to see. I wanted to try to capture that echo chamber idea and show how we get to pick and choose the angle from which other people see us. I usually paint from photos I've taken myself or compiled, so I took that first photo of myself in the bathroom. I actually took two photos. The first photo was me looking at myself in the mirror, which I didn't think reflected what the prompt I had gotten was saying. None of those people were looking at other people or at themselves. They were just purely focused on their phones. So the second photo of me was looking at my phone, a little gremlin-y, hunched over, because I have a huge problem being on my phone too much. I think, “Man, my back's really sore today. Oh, it's because I was staring at my phone all day.” I wanted to capture that feeling of being so focused on your phone that you're alone and distracted from the rest of the things outside of you. You're not paying attention to your surroundings or anything else.

My original idea was to do something like those photos where you take a picture of yourself in the mirror, and it's reflected and reflected and reflected, so you're getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I wanted to get that mirror layering to reflect how that echo chamber siphons down information: you hear it from someone who only knows part of it, and then someone hears it from you and you only know part of it, and it gets into these smaller and smaller pieces that reflect less and less of what's happening. But then when I went to paint it, I realized I'm not a super detailed painter. So instead of the image getting smaller, I decided to focus more on something else. The white is this ghostly – creepy? – kind of deal, and the only white in the painting is in the eye and in the phone, to reflect that transfixation. I thought of when I was little, sitting really close to the TV. My parents would tell me not to stare at it because it's bad for my eyes. That's the kind of vibe I ended up going with.

This is awesome. I see what you were initially going for, and I'm not that super detailed artist either. I don't want to get out my electron microscope and draw tiny images within images.

I work too fast for that. If I don't paint fast enough, that feeling is gone, and I have a hard time reconnecting with the painting until that feeling comes back around. I have a very large pile of paintings, and I know that I just haven't felt that feeling again in a long time. I just don't have the emotional energy to pretend to be feeling that feeling.

How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I have another piece that's actually similar in the sense that it's a selfie in a mirror. It focuses more on how we portray ourselves, especially on social media, on our phones and other devices. How much of that is real and how much of it is curated? And is that curated part actually real, too? So by that part, the mirror and the phone, I've already created a kind of similar piece.

But in the new piece, I thought it was really fun to do a close-up on my face, because it's so uncomfortable to paint yourself. It’s therapeutic, but it's also very uncomfortable because I think, “That doesn't look how I thought I looked.” Maybe I look like a little weird. In the reference photo, I have a double chin and kind of greasy, messy hair. It was fun to blow that up. Early in the process, it looks super wrong and I look so ugly. But I appreciate that because it's becoming more intimate with yourself, more comfortable with yourself, which I think the other painting does less of. There's still the technology aspect, though.

It's funny to realize that our ugliest self and our most beautiful self are still the same person.

My initial thought was to make myself look horrible. Not necessarily way off, but the colors I used are a little sickly. There's a little teal in that purple, there's a double chin. I started out wanting to make myself look gross to convey that feeling you get if you sit on your phone all day and you just feel horrible about yourself. Inherently and naturally through my process, I ended up making myself look better than I do in the photo. It just feels so subconscious to want to make yourself look better in something that's kind of permanent. I didn't mean to do it; it just sort of happened. It’s interesting thinking about that as a reflection of how most of society works, how we think about ourselves and beauty standards and all that.

That really sits with me all the time. I love my mom, but she’s one of those old-school ladies, like “You need to dress nice, because somebody might be your future boss and they're going to want you to look professional. You need to dress nice every day and brush your hair…” And you can see that my hair is naturally always very crazy. Over the years, I have purposefully rejected that, while simultaneously still feeling guilty about it. I show up to work in baggy sweatpants and sweatshirts and my hair is super crazy, and I think, “These are middle schoolers. I do not care what they think.” But at the same time, there's constantly that sense of guilt. I feel like I should be dressing up or presenting myself in a better light. And then there's more guilt because I shouldn't feel embarrassed about not dressing up or not looking a certain way. I'm too smart for that, but I still feel it, and so there's that shame layer cake that goes into the perception of self and beauty standards.

It's one of those things that I like to think about because I'm on Instagram a lot and you just see that constantly. Someone will post something saying, “Oh, this is the real me!” But everything is curated! It’s like we’re trying to bring authenticity to our social media following, but is anything truly authentic if you stopped and thought to take a picture to post? Even if the real you is real, you still chose that. How does that affect your relationship to yourself? I'm just so fascinated by what you must think about yourself based on what you're posting.

We're constantly bombarded with people who look amazing, and people want to rush to judge them for not being real enough, posing a certain way. But this is also their livelihood. I imagine the difficulties they're going through, constantly trying to live up to this image that they have curated, and how stressful and taxing that would be. People like to pick on each other a lot on Instagram, but I often have a lot of sympathy for everyone. They're usually just trying to do their best.

We all just want to have a good day.

Yeah!

Is there anything else that you would like to mention that I didn't ask about?

Oh I love to talk about art. Alaska has so many artists up here, but so many focus on the mountains and the landscape. It's so easy to do because it's gorgeous up here and that stuff sells. But there just aren’t as many places to talk about fun or weird art. So anytime I get a chance, I just word vomit because I'm so excited to talk about it.

Then I'm really glad that you found us because we’re all about trying to foster a sense of community among creative people. You just collaborated with the person who made the other thing, and somebody else is already collaborating with your piece.

It's also super fun because then you don't have to think of a new prompt. Half the time, I don’t know what to paint. So having something to get me started, especially if it's out of my comfort zone, is so cool. I would never have chosen to build something inspired by that.

Last question: What advice would you give another newbie coming to this project?

Before I did this, I went through the Bait/Switch website and checked out a bunch of the pieces and interviews. Reading through all of those different processes was super awesome for two reasons. One, getting to know other artists and all their processes is, again, so fascinating to me. I love that stuff. Two, it made me comfortable enough to just go for it. Maybe it's not my greatest piece or my most interesting piece, but it was great to just go for it and have fun. It's easy to say that but going through and reading each person's experience was really helpful. I felt like part of the community before I was even participating in the community.

Call Number: C89VA | C91VA.atUnti

Hagen Atkins: As someone who has mercurial moods I strive to capture the feelings of a moment, while simultaneously considering the lens of looking to past events. I do this through often exaggerated colors and mark making. Despite sometimes depicting more solemn moments I always love looking for the joke that can often be found if you cross your eyes hard enough.